Mantis Email Sending Problem

If when using the Mantis (bug tracking system), you get a message like:
"SYSTEM WARNING: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to smtpserver:25 (Permission denied)"
you may take a look at the Mantis forums.
If the answers given there did not solve your problem, then the information below may help you:

(I assume that you are using Linux :) )
In your terminal window, type
tail -f /var/log/messages
and press ENTER.
You may see something like:
"SELinux is preventing the httpd daemon from connecting to network port 25"

If this is the case, then, you may prevent the SELinux from running :) [But if your server is open to internet, stopping SELinux may not be a wonderful idea, I am NOT a SELinux expert]

To disable the SELinux, type
vi /etc/selinux/config
and press ENTER.
In vi editor (i hope you know how to use vi, you may use nano or other editor as well), change the
SELINUX=enforcing
line as
SELINUX=disabled

Save and exit the config file.
Reboot your server.
You probably will not get smtp error from your Mantis.
:)

An easy but primitive web site load test

If you have a Linux OS and want to make a (primitive) load test to a page on your web server, here is a quick solution. In your terminal window, type and ENTER:
ab -n 1000 -c 5 http://YourWebSite/page.html

5 is the number of the concurrent requests and 1000 is the number of the total requests.

IBM vs I18N

There is one thing common in the IBM products: they don't like any regional settings other than US :S
For instance, you are trying to record a Web application with IBM Rational Functional Tester. During the recording, you press the Pause or Stop button and get the warning that "... the record activity can not be started / stopped ...".
Change the regional settings to US (and language to English) and try again.

[ I wasted a whole work-day just because of this easy(!) configuration problem ! ]